Najeeb had gone missing on October 15, 2016, a day after an alleged altercation with ABVP activists on the campus.

A 19-year-old man, who was arrested last month for allegedly making ransom calls to the family of missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmad, has told interrogators that he got the contact details of Najeeb’s uncle from a Facebook page set up to help trace the student.

Najeeb had gone missing on October 15, 2016, a day after an alleged altercation with ABVP activists on the campus. The accused, Mohammad Shamim, was arrested by a Crime Branch team of the Delhi Police on January 20 after he made multiple calls to his uncle. He had said over the phone that Najeeb was in his custody, and had demanded Rs 20 lakh, before eventually settling on Rs 15 lakh for Najeeb’s “safe release”, police said.

During interrogation, Shamim told police he had never seen Najeeb in his life. “He told police he saw photographs of Najeeb in newspapers and social media. He also got to know that police had announced a reward on his release. He went to the JNU website, from where he found a Facebook page dedicated to finding Najeeb. He got his uncle’s phone number from there,” police said.

“Then he hatched a plan to get money from his family. He bought five mobile SIM cards using fake IDs and started calling Najeeb’s uncle. He also decided on a spot in Maharajganj, where he said he would ‘hand over’ Najeeb to his family,” police said.

“On sustained interrogation, Shamim confessed to his crime,” said an officer.